Weight lifting calories burned

Assuming you were lifting heavy (heavy weight, fewer reps), the HRM are not a good estimator of cals burned. Strength training burns very few cals during the workout. I guestimate about 3 cals per minute during my lifting sessions (compared to 10+ during cardio).

My issue with this is how did you arrive at 3 cal/minute? There's already so much guestimation involved with counting calories that I don't like throwing in another arbitrary number in there if I don't have to.

Also why isn't an HRM a good estimator of calories burned for strength training? Lifting elevates the heart rate, so why wouldn't using that elevated heart rate be good for calculations. It seems like the same principle as using it for cardio, just that cardio is more intense.

I also don't lift extremely heavy. I prefer to do drop sets, starting at 10 or 12 and working my way to 4 for each exercise. I mix it up a lot to keep my body guessing though, so some days I do consistent sets of set weight with set reps, other days I do drop sets, and other days I do heavy weight for maxing. I'm also just getting back into the gym, as in this is my first full week of being there, and I don't like to go to heavy when just starting again. I also workout alone, therefore using heavy weight on some exercises is just not feasible.

I strength train 3 days a week and do cardio 7 days a week. I don't track my strength training only the cardio. I consider the strength training a bonus and use those calories burned for other miscalculations I may make. Pluse that is just to much to keep track of IMO. Just my 2-cents

I do the crossfit WOD early morning, then another 30 minutes of cardio mid morning, and then in the afternoon I knock out my lifting. I do this 5 days a week, the only part that gets removed is the WOD if my lifting made me too sore to do it (usually legs). I'm also trying to eat no more than 100 calories above my BMR each day, so if the calculations are off by that much it could be detrimental to my health. So unfortunately I can't just use them as error calories, and as I stated above I'm not very comfortable throwing another unknown into the already rather large sea of unknowns involved here. I'd much rather have another number to crunch to keep everything as consistent as possible.


Not trying to sound snide or anything in these, just wondering if anyone has any information on coming up with calories burned by lifting.

Ah, that makes sense now, in a vague way anyways. Lifting is anaerobic in nature (hence why creatine is, in theory, a great supplement) and since all the equations based upon heart rate make use of O2 rates they are pretty much useless when it comes to lifting.